


delivered to you wrapped in cellophane

by stephanericher



Series: SASO 17 [14]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-25
Updated: 2017-06-25
Packaged: 2018-11-18 21:42:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11299413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stephanericher/pseuds/stephanericher
Summary: Tatsuya is twelve the first time his older self visits.





	delivered to you wrapped in cellophane

**Author's Note:**

> for saso br2, original prompt [here](http://sportsanime.dreamwidth.org/22249.html?thread=12416233#cmt12416233)

Tatsuya is twelve the first time his older self visits. He’s recognizable, same hairdo, same smile that doesn’t meet his eyes, and it’s not encouraging that his future is so stagnant. Tatsuya can’t tell how old he is (twenty-five or thirty or older?) but he’s an adult, smooth-talking, a little more reality behind his confidence despite the similarity.  
  
He gives Tatsuya a hunk of meat wrapped in cellophane, cooked rare (Tatsuya prefers his a little more well-done).   
  
“Does it get better?” Tatsuya says, the meat sliding smooth down his throat (and it’s obvious that’s not what he’s talking about, but then this version of him remembers being him now).   
  
“You’ll see,” says the other Tatsuya, and Tatsuya knows from adults that always means no.

* * *

He gets used to it, the older versions of him coming by with a cut of tender meat, dispensing nothing more, a few choice words, always looking at him carefully in some sort of appraisal. It’s a little like the NBA scouts, he thinks, when he gets to college, only they’re never interested in playing basketball with him and he’s beginning to wonder what will happen when he becomes them. When will the invisible transition take place? When will he be pulled back or forward in time? When will he carefully wrap a piece of meat and hand it over to the selves he has been?   
  
Maybe all of this talk goes nowhere; maybe he never makes it to the NBA. Maybe he flunks out of the D-League. Maybe he has to go to Europe or Asia or Australia, play there in tiny gyms for pennies on the dollar. Maybe that’s what he’s not telling himself, and he’s fine with that. Hope is the cruelest of all possible futures, but he’s the kind of person who would hold it over his younger self’s head just to spite him.  
  
When Tatsuya is twenty-five, his shoulder gives out. There’s no warning, just the snap, just the endless parade of doctors and second (thirty-ninth) opinions that are just different perspectives on the same medical fact, that he’ll never play ball at a high level again. This is the kind of thing he would have liked to avoid, would have told himself, would have lucked into anyway (and maybe that’s what he’s been looking at this whole time).  
  
He’s sleeping off the pain the next time his future self visits. This one’s a little older, but perhaps close to his age, close enough. He puts his cellophane package in the refrigerator and guides Tatsuya to the sofa.  
  
“You knew,” says Tatsuya.  
  
“Now so do you,” says his older self.  
  
(So this is the future, sad stagnation; maybe he should just end it all right here so that version of him never appears.)  
  
Then his older self leans forward and kisses him on the mouth, presses his fucked-up shoulder against the couch cushion (and the painkillers are wearing off and Tatsuya nearly sobs in pain before he pushes back and his own fingers curl around his bicep). His own fingers are pulling at the hem of his t-shirt, the elastic of his sweatpants, and Tatsuya’s about to say something about this being the first time but he’s fucked himself before (that one’s too easy, a given; the other him laughs at the unspoken joke because of course he remembers and it’s a little unfair that he knows exactly how this is going to go, has the whole script in his memory, and Tatsuya’s a few steps behind).   
  
“When do I get to be you?” Tatsuya asks, still a little fuzzy with the sensation of watching his older self ride him to the finish.  
  
“Soon,” his older self says, leaning down for another kiss.  
  
He’s gone the next morning, but the package is in the fridge. Inside is a pair of human testicles, the same Tatsuya had squeezed last night, and shouldn’t he have known this the whole time?

* * *

Even when he’s going into the past, he still sees the future. Sometimes it’s quick, a bit of himself passed hand to hand on the train (sometimes he remembers the way those packages are wrapped and waits a bit until time comes for him); sometimes it’s longer and they get to fuck a few times, try a few more things, stay lazy in bed on a cold winter morning. Tatsuya wonders if his older self regrets it, killing him, but it’s not something they can go back and undo (he wonders how many of these perpetual cycles they’ve done, if it’s less than infinite; it makes his head hurt a little so he stops).   
  
“When’s the end of the road?” Tatsuya says.  
  
He’s never seen himself older than maybe mid-thirties, but that doesn’t mean he’s never been there (but Tatsuya supposes old meat would be tougher, less tender; he wonders if he’s ever had any from the shoulder that’s stapled together and still doesn’t move properly sometimes).   
  
“You’ll know,” says his older self.   
  
“No wonder I killed you,” says Tatsuya.  
  
“I killed you, too,” says his older self.  
  
They fuck again, both leaving bite marks in the other’s shoulder.

* * *

Tatsuya is thirty when he gets deposited at the scene, a version of himself he’s pretty sure is fresh from fucking him a few years back waiting at the kitchen counter. Then a third walks in, a little older than Tatsuya is right now.   
  
“I’d tell you to pay attention,” says the third one. “Or that I’m sorry.”  
  
(The best part about it being himself is that he already knows; sometimes it’s the worst but they never mince their words. He’s still surprised, though, when the second one lets the third one gut him, doesn’t take the pleasure away—but maybe he’d suffered enough.)  
  
The two of them eat the fucked-up shoulder together that night, broiled in the oven like a steak.

* * *

He doesn’t mean to memorize the day, but the second time through he sees the calendar, left out to the day. That’s one of the only things Tatsuya remembers to do (the rest is just luck and whatever the opposite of entropy is, ensuring that however many times they go around the loop everything is the same), and then he’s pulled back in time, to what was a pretty damn good lay the first time around.   
  
He gives his twenty-eight-year-old self a long goodbye kiss, more than he deserves and less than he wants, the kind of compromise he’s never been good at making.


End file.
